The LEGO Batman Movie

Grade: B

Director: Chris McKay

Starring the voices of: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Mariah Carey, Jenny Slate and Channing Tatum

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

The LEGO Batman Movie isn’t the DC movie we deserve, but it’s the one we need right now. In a time when the cinematic Caped Crusader feels both exhausted and exhausting, along comes a Lord & Miller-inspired parody to save the day. Director Chris McKay unifies the iterations, drawing its material from not just the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan exemplars, but also clever callbacks to the Adam West-starring TV series, the Super Friends cartoon and even the Joel Schumacher debacles, It even offers an olive branch to recent critics by taking some knowing jabs at the Zack Snyder re-imaginings. Want a film that lampoons Suicide Squad one moment—”I got to do something!” exclaims Killer Croc—then Bat Shark Repellant the next? Well, this is the Dark Knight for you.

You won’t find a funnier thirty minutes of film than LEGO Batman Movie’s opening act, with its surfeit of pop-culture references (including a recurring Jerry Maguire gag, of all things) and comic-book cues. Joker (Zach Galifianakis) leads a battle royale between the entire Batman rogues gallery, plus a cadre of concocting baddies like “Egghead” and “Condiment King.” It’s just a matter of minutes before Batman (Will Arnett, reprising his role from The LEGO Movie) has foiled the Joker’s plans again, but not before the proudly angry and lonely Batman refuses to acknowledge Joker as his greatest nemesis.

A wounded Joker quickly hatches his path to renewed infamy when Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) assumes the reins of police commissioner from her father. Normally, the sole duty of Gotham City police commish was the ability to push the button illuminating the Bat Signal. Barbara promises a new era of crime fighting based on “statistics” and “compassion,” and “not Batman.” When Joker and the rest of the traditional rogues gallery turns themselves into Barbara, it threatens to render Batman obsolete.

The rest of Joker’s plan rests on stoking Batman’s ego, exile to the Phantom Zone (yes, Superman doesn’t get off easy, either) and an escape accompanied by a new band of iconic villains: Sauron, Voldemort (Eddie Izzard), Gremlins, Dracula, Agent Smith, King Kong, Jaws and many more. It’s understandable if you spend large swaths of the film trying to figure out how the filmmakers acquired licensing privileges of all its characters.

Meanwhile, Batman’s psyche of solitude is invaded by both his latent attraction to Barbara and the arrival of orphan Richard Grayson (Michael Cera), who goes by “Dick” at school—”Well, kids can be cruel,” Batman retorts. The wide-eyed Grayson soon dons a red and yellow costume belonging to a scuttled hero named “Reggae Man” and adopts the moniker “Robin.” Nudged by the ever-reproving Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Batman gradually recognizes the value of teamwork and embraces his new substitute family: Barbara the platonic coworker; Robin the surrogate son; and Alfred the father figure.

If the middle portion of LEGO Batman Movie appears to sag, it’s only in comparison to the joke-a-second opener. There’s little of the sentimentality of The LEGO Movie. Indeed, obvious appearances aside, LEGO Batman Movie is less a LEGO sequel than both a superhero send-up and an exhilarating standalone. It’s fun, family-friendly, and, in keeping with the heyday of Abrahams and Zucker, a searing satire accessible to kids and adults alike. Everybody do the Batusi.

Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire

Get Ur Bleak On

Grade: C

Director: Lee Daniels

Starring: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Sheperd, and Lenny Kravitz

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Only an African-American filmmaker could get away with making Precious. That’s meant as both a compliment and a criticism.

Officially known as Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire, the film has been a runaway train of accolades since its Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award wins at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with a final destination undoubtedly bound for the Academy Awards.

Set in the mean streets of Harlem circa 1987, it is a story of inspiration and uplift that shines a light onto a world that is both foreign and, thankfully, unfamiliar to most people. Unfortunately, it is equal parts illumination and exploitation, a prefabricated passion play as pretentious as its full title. It is not that the horrific life endured by obese, illiterate teenager Chaireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is far-fetched. You need only to peruse the morning newspaper or the nightly TV news to know that the world is an unspeakably brutal place for a great many people.

The cruel hand that life deals to Precious includes poverty, being repeatedly raped and impregnated twice by her absentee father (the first child afflicted with Down syndrome), and suffering constant physical and emotional abuse from her welfare mom, Mary (Mo’Nique). Precious’ hulking mass acts as both a prison and protection from harrowing reality, her lone means of escape a vivid imagination in which she walks Hollywood red carpet premieres and dances in music videos. Old photographs of her mother become animated in her mind’s eye, uttering the loving words never breathed by the flesh-and-blood incarnation. Sometimes, Precious’ own reflection in the mirror morphs into the image of a blond, white girl.

That Precious harbors self-loathing is painful but understandable. What is regrettable is the extent to which producer-director Lee Daniels himself indulges, even perpetuates, the racial stereotypes a film of this sort should transcend. In one scene, Precious steals and scarfs down an entire bucket of fried chicken (not exactly Jean Valjean pinching bread to feed his family). Virtually all the innocent and/or benevolent figures in Precious’ life are cast with light-skinned actors. And, without proper context, you could be excused for walking out of Precious believing the welfare rolls are filled primarily with uneducated, dysfunctional, AIDS-infested freeloaders who regard their children as a means to a welfare check to subsidize their indolence.

That segment of the population exists, no doubt. The sin here, however, is a lack of perspective. The cure for Precious’ harsh home-life proves to be her GED prep class, whose only dissimilarity with a setting like Freedom Writers and its ilk is that the teacher here, Blu Rain (Paula Patton), isn’t Caucasian. Precious also enjoys helping hands from a welfare caseworker (a glammed-down Mariah Carey) and hospital nurse (Lenny Kravitz). That would be well and good were it not for a scene late in the film in which Precious befriends another young girl at the welfare office whose vicious mother reminds Precious of her own. The message is clear and misguided: The fault lies not with government or philanthropic support systems but with those who either misuse or reject them.

It is a viewpoint born, like the film, out of self-congratulatory, limousine liberalism – quite literally in the case of co-producer Oprah Winfrey, who was so touched by this movie that she vowed to look twice at the forgotten street-corner souls she passes while cruising by in her’s. The near-total absence of men is fitting given the involvement of both O. and co-producer Tyler Perry, who has made millions dressing in drag and peddling his own farcical interpretations of African-American women.

Precious’ psyche unmasks Daniels’ pretension when she inserts her and her mother as the Italian-speaking protagonists in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women, a peculiar fantasy considering Precious reads at a second-grade level and confesses that Ms. Rain and her lesbian lover “talked liked TV stations I didn’t even watch.” Moreover, Daniels betrays a predilection for the most salacious elements of his character’s misery. Flashbacks to Precious’ rape are intercut with images of sweat, Vaseline, frying bacon, and pig’s feet simmering in a stovetop stew.

And then there’s Mo’Nique’s highly touted performance, which is volcanic and emotionally raw. Her despicable, almost cartoonish virago is also among the vilest fictional characters ever put on film (on a par with Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth in Blue Velvet and Dylan Baker’s pedophile in Happiness). Only during a late-film monologue does she finally approach anything close to a three-dimensional person, but in the event you’re tempted to view her as the least bit human, the reproving glare of Carey’s Mrs. Weiss is there to set you straight.

Precious is nicely produced, well-acted, enlightening, and both culturally and racially deplorable. In other words, D.W. Griffith would have been proud.

Neil Morris